Muskoxen are poorly adapted for digging through heavy snow for food, so winter habitat is generally restricted to areas with shallow snow accumulations or areas blown free of snow.

On the other hand, there has been considerable effort put into understanding how the Musk Ox reacts to climate change. A Mar 8, 2010 PNAS study (*) used mitochondrial DNA to determine a series of environmentally-driven changes in the size of Musk Ox population, finding that

the genetic diversity of the species increased and decreased frequently over the past 65,000 years

Notably:

Those changes are out of sync with changes in population sizes of other similar animals, such as mammoths

[Dr. Joel Berger, WCS senior scientist] who has been studying musk oxen in Alaska since 2006, is looking into various factors responsible for the animals’ ability to thrive in some areas, hold stable population numbers in others, and decline in still others. He and his partners are currently evaluating the impacts of changing climate, species interactions, and nutrition to musk oxen population dynamics and distribution in Alaska

What happened? It happened that the Musk Ox failed to comply. Rather than a weakling threatened by a 0.5C change in the average planetary temperature, Berger and colleagues discovered that:

…the quintessential example of megafaunal fortitude in the face of really bad weather is the musk ox…the animal has managed to persist through repeated climate shifts and habitat upheaval…Historical records and genetic evidence alike suggest that the musk ox is a Rasputin, “the comeback kid of the Quaternary”…They undergo periods where they really bolster their numbers for a few years, then they go down to an almost complete collapse, then later they come back like gangbusters…It would be hard to argue that musk ox are on their way out the door…

Really? Who could have guessed…no worries, though, National Geographic and the WCS are still accepting donations. And neither Science Daily nor the NGS nor the WGS will find the courage to publish an article stating the scientific evidence: “Musk Ox most likely easier to adapt to a warmer than to a cooler climate“.